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Musings about the virtual and the real world

Looking for a new project

A good friend of mine has the knack to come up with one-liners that pack more truth than a library of management books. One his lines recently was “there are process oriented people and outcome oriented people“. Its not a judgement, its just a statement. And more than any Meyers Briggs test, it can serve very quickly to understand people and their motivations. I personally am an outcome-oriented person, I do stuff “in order to get it done”, not necessarily because they are fun. In that, I tend to be efficient to the point of cutting corners.

In EVE, I like have distinct goals as well. It used to be recruitment for my alliance and corporation, it used to be settling of new wormholes, bringing in components to build a carrier in a C2 or – recently – becoming a full member of Noir., EVE Online’s premier mercenary outfit. These were all projects with pretty well defined end points and hence appealed to me. In common with these goals is that success and failure is under my control, that they don’t take an unrealistic time and getting them done fits both my in-game personae (e.g. no scam, no lies, no tears) as well as my RL schedule.

And now I am finding myself looking for a new project since my main objective for the last year (becoming a Noir. Merc) has been achieved. Don’t get me wrong, I have no intentions to leave Noir. I love flying with the crew, I learn new things every day and I actually do think that we are doing good for the game overall at the moment by systematically chasing the goons out of their habitats (look up “Creative Destruction”, one of the most misquoted terms in my industry). No, I won’t leave Noir. if I can help it for quite some time. I am not a good PvP pilot yet, either and I can learn much from these guys.

But “learning” is a process, not an outcome. I could arbitrarily set goals like ISK efficiency, K/D ratios and the like, something measurable that allows me to monitor my progress. Originally, I had planned to stay with Noir. until I have 1000 kills but in fleet fights of the scale that we engage, this isn’t that hard, all I need to do is to log in, join anyone of the fleets, go out and press F1.

1000 solo kills, now that is hard but I don’t need to be in Noir. for that – I could attempt that on a NPC corp character but to be honest, I don’t really see the point. I love PvP but I need to have it for a purpose, defending a home, attacking a real enemy, taking a system etc. Just for frags is not my thing for EVE (I do that in PlanetSide 2 – at least until the new CCP shooter comes out for which I will be numero uno fan, I really wanted to like DUST and even bought a PS3 for it but could never get into consoles. PC-based shooters, now that I can do).

So, what do? As a sideline, I need to make ISK. I have nearly depleted by 4bn reserve that I set aside for my Noir. venture but with literally zero income, having cash flow would be nice. Am not desperate yet (I have assets including some PLEX) but whatever I do next needs to make ISK as well as have clear goals.

Lets look at the options. I really had planned to live in a C1 and harvest it when the locals are not home and splat the locals when they are. To this end, I got my Orca loaded up with ship, missiles, spare drones, mobile depots and tractor beams, called it Winnebago and follow my C1 across High Sec. The plan was that my 2 scouts on the inside run the hacking sites, then scan down the high sec, the Orca gets brought close and sites are run. A good plan in general since the C1 I was camping had a high sec static and a sleepy Russian industry corporation who didn’t even bother running their own sites. But the problem with this project is that it just takes too long to get all the assets into place, by the time I scanned down the signatures, made sure no hostiles are hunting and bringing my Orca across 20 jumps, its late and I want to swap toons and fly on my main with the Mercenaries. I even managed to get a ship killed by the sleepers in one (I think creative!) attempt to clear the gas site towers with a Jackdaw (how hard can be to out-transversal an NPC tower? As it happens, pretty hard), I gave this project up for now. Basically, dumpster diving (as this activity is called by the way), is something to be done in a team or as exclusive project, not as a hobby.

So, my search continues but overall, I am pretty upbeat about EVE at the moment, the vibe is good, many of the upcoming changes seem interesting and positive and I am sure I find a fun goal. I am quite enthusiastic about the upcoming citadels and industrial arrays for example. I could see myself getting into setting up a refining array, allowing everyone to dock and use it and charge a fair fee for it.

In the meantime, there are still a few Goons left who put up fights, so lets log in and see if we can do something about that.